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Domestication Of Peach Palm In Southwestern Amazonia, Michelly De Cristo-Araújo, Vanessa Maciel Dos Reis, Doriane Picanço Rodrigues, Charles R. Clement

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The peach palm (Bactris gasipaes Kunth) is the only Neotropical palm domesticated by Native Americans. Its place of origin as a crop (B. gasipaes var. gasipaes) has been debated for more than a century, with three hypotheses currently in discussion: southwestern Amazonia; northwestern South America; or multiple origins in the distribution of the wild relatives (B. gasipaes var. chichagui). The small amount of archaeological data available supports the second hypothesis, but they contrast dramatically with the molecular-genetic analyses that support the first or the third, depending on how they are interpreted. On morphological grounds, two of the three types of …